Tempting Downloads

Wired News: College junior Kyle Taylor is downloading hundreds of songs by No Doubt, Bruce Springsteen and others onto the Compaq laptop in his cramped dormitory room. With a few more clicks of his mouse, Taylor is watching commercial-free Seinfeld episodes on his computer. In just minutes, he then downloads the entire movie A League of Their Own.
The 20-year-old is not breaking any laws. Nor is he at risk of expensive lawsuits brought by the entertainment industry over copyright violations.
Taylor and his classmates at American University — and thousands more students at other U.S. colleges — are among the earliest customers of a new generation of legal downloading services approved by the largest music labels and Hollywood studios. Students appear enthusiastic, despite some early kinks that can keep them from loading songs onto iPods.
“You can one-click-download an entire album, and the downloading time is, like, a minute,” Taylor said. His laptop holds more than 3,000 songs.
In the search for online customers, entertainment companies are aggressively pursuing college students, who cannot remember life before the internet. This generation works off laptops more than it watches television, plugs into high-speed university networks, uses the web for homework and headlines — and on average carries around more than 1,000 songs on a hard drive.
Already, dozens of schools are rolling out downloading services from Ruckus Network, RealNetworks, Napster and Sea Blue Media. So important is this university market that Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the world’s largest label, has paid the entire bill at some schools during trial semesters. Sony-backed artists are available for downloading on all the major services.
Students Use Next-Gen Downloads [Wired News]